


sight is not a pretty thing

by eyemoji



Series: le roi est mort [2]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Fae AU, contains a little bit of description of pryce's eyes, contains some dialogue from the opening of the finale, i Really enjoyed writing this it was an Experience, woven fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-05 22:18:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,617
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13397412
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eyemoji/pseuds/eyemoji
Summary: once upon a time, there lived a special little girl.  the doctors said she would never see again. they were wrong. she saweverything.





	sight is not a pretty thing

so, here’s a story.

once upon a time, there lived a special little girl. she was born with clouded eyes, and a weak heart not destined to beat through an entire lifetime. the doctors said she would not last through the night. but then she did. they foretold she would never be able to move faster than a slow walk, and that she would certainly never be able to support herself at any great height. on her eighth birthday, she ran her way up to the top of the highest hill around for miles, towering above the town, wind whipping through her hair and whispering secrets to her born of the forest at her back. the doctors said she would never see again. they were wrong. she saw  _ everything _ .

she saw things that would have terrified the minds out of larger, older, saner people than she. she saw the earth’s worst monstrosities, the by-products of the darkest hearts and the most depraved minds, minds so twisted beyond what they started out as that they no longer qualified as human. she read between the lines of convolutions tangled together by creatures so ancient they outlasted time itself; she slipped in and out of other worlds daily, not bothering to mask her flickering existence from the humans around her who did not believe in her gift. they called her insane. the other little girls and boys whispered about her, told tall tales in the night, once they thought she had fallen asleep, about how she communed with the dead, with demons, how she was no human child, that she must be a changeling, unwanted by the fae, too disturbing to fit in among the humans. 

at first, she used to hope that they were right. hours spent lying awake on a stiff, cold pallet so hard it might as well have been the caretaker’s husband on a saturday night after enough glasses of  _ “the Lord’s caramel,” _  led to hundreds of thousands of quietly anticipatory moments. she started looking more carefully at the adults around her, on tenterhooks to find the man with the too-long canines or the woman with the eyes that smiled too tight, or the person with bricks where lungs ought to be, waiting for one of them to whisk her away in the dead of the night. to save her. they never did. 

so she went back to the drawing board. reevaluated. what was it the cellar brat had said?  _ a changeling, unwanted by the fae. _ how could she have been so stupid? this was never going to be as easy as waiting for a royal invitation. she would have to work twice as hard, thrice as hard. she would become the best. then, they would take her back. they would have to.

she began to fix things. first she fixed toys, and clocks, and old machines that no one thought would ever run again. then she fixed bigger things. she fixed the cold and drafty rafters in the orphanage, and when she went to school she fixed equations to make them more useful. everything around her, she made better and sharper and stronger.

she had no friends, of course, while she was on her journey. she had long since told herself that she didn’t need any-- they only got in the way-- except for the ones she made. the little girl had a talent for making dolls– beautiful, wonderful, mechanical dolls. and she thought they were better friends than anyone in the world. they could be whatever she wanted them to be, and as real as she wanted them to be. and they never left her behind, and they never talked back, and they were never afraid of her.    
except when she wanted them to be. except when she  _ needed _ them to be.

because if there was one thing the girl never felt like she could fix, it was herself. 

 

and then, one day, a strange thing happened: the special girl, the strange girl, the  _ broken _ girl met an old man. older than anyone-- any _ thing _ \-- she had ever met-- but still tricky and clever. almost as clever as the girl. and he opened his mouth. inhaled. and he spoke.

* * *

the seelie court has been touted throughout history for its benevolence. it is held up as a shining beacon of light and purity, said to represent  _ good _ and  _ loved _ and  _ safe _ .

you would be a fool to believe this.

traditionally, the high courts of the fae are presided over by two queens, one each for seelie and unseelie. this is a delicate balance that has withstood the test of time for millennia without interruption.

until, one day, the balance broke. from the turmoiled ashes of a thousand failed attempts rose a new seelie ruler. a King. his name was carefully guarded, a secret locked away so tightly it would continue to stay a mystery for a hundred millennia after his death. but this King, as did many fae, had a glamour. and this glamour had a name. and its name was matthew neumann.

what was particularly striking about matthew neumann was the seamlessness with which the King wore his skin. many among the fair folk slipped on human identities as if they were masks-- effective, from a distance, and often more than enough to get the job done. but no matter how great the effort, no matter how skilled the one wearing it, every glamour had something about it that was… not quite right. an aura of hollowness, of empty promises and broken kisses and every variation in between, lives within each glamour, follows it around as it presents itself to the unsuspecting, lingers in the air long after the mask has been retired.

except. except for matthew neumann. matthew neumann was slick. matthew neumann was charming. matthew neumann was  _ comfortable. _ the King was a master of beguilery, and the talent translated well into human expressions. he had the power to gain power. and that in itself was staggering.

so when the King, as matthew neumann, went up to a special little strange little broken little girl, opened his mouth, inhaled, and said:

“hello, little girl. i want you to make a doll for me.”

he expected nothing less than total agreement. he said, 

“and it must be your very best doll. it must look like a real human, and sound like a real human, and  _ be _ a real human. can you do this for me?”

he thought maybe there might be a smile. little girls were always told to smile, he knew. perhaps she would even grin. she would certainly acquiesce without too much hesitation. there would be no need for a push.

the girl was no longer little. she did not smile. she did not grin. she certainly did not enter into an agreement blindly. years of hard-earned experience had taught her to know better. and, when all else failed her, her eyes did not. and her eyes saw straight through matthew neumann in a way no other pair of eyes, not even the King’s own, had before. she saw the faerie underneath. she saw his grin, coiled, lounging, smooth as any predatory cat. and, if she squinted, tilted her head into the light  _ just so, _ she could glimpse a hint of the intention swimming underneath the unruffled surface.

the girl thought for a moment. then she said: “and if i can?”

the King did not reply immediately. his eyes fixed upon her, piercing through the veil of matthew neumann and into the depths of the girl’s unapologetically human gaze. from his point of view, he studied her for several long, steady moments. on her end, she experienced a mere fraction of a millisecond before he reached a decision. and yet, her eyes were so powerful, and her own innate strength so present that she  _ knew _ he had weighed her and summed her up, down, sideways, and backwards before choosing his next words, as perfectly tailored to suit the situation.

the old King replied, “then you and i will fix the world. i will be young, and you will be whole, and the world will finally be everything it could be. everything it  _ should _ be.”

and the girl’s eyes did not narrow in frustration or suspicion, for she knew he could not lie to her. she took the hand he offered and he led her away, to the realms of the fae, to the place she had spent countless dry-eyed, wet-cheeked hours wishing and studying and scheming to reach.

she sat in silence as they made the journey  _ homewards _ . she sat in silence as the King’s own hands placed a crown of ivory and bramble, of rose and thorns, and painted with the crimson blood of a newborn’s thumb upon her head, its weight too much for any ordinary human, and still nothing in comparison to the King’s touch itself-- just the brush of a thumb over a cheek, and yet it sealed her fate.

she sat in silence at the head of the unseelie court as matthew neumann was discarded in front of her once and for all.

and she sat in silence as, later, her eyes lay on the floor made of no human stone in front of her, shining in all their bloodied grace like two ripe jewels, ready for the picking, surrounded by an elegant assortment of the brambles from her crown. in the places where they once used to reside inside her head now sat twin rubies, twinkling darkly as a glittering reminder of the price of humanity.

the King was right, in a way. there had been no need to push.

the girl had done that herself.

**Author's Note:**

> there's more fae-u stuff in the works! i hope you enjoyed this:)


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